I don’t work in the Daily Kos ad department, I’m not a staffer here in any capacity. But if I did work in the ad department, I think I would have made the same call to accept an ad from Focus on the Family.
I saw the ad this morning, clicked on the link.
Save a baby’s life today!
Rescue a child and mother from the destruction of abortion.
There is a war on the unborn in our society. A million babies face abortion every year. But you can make a difference! You can save a baby from abortion!
Your gift to support our Option Ultrasound program will equip pregnancy medical clinics across the country with ultrasound machines, resources, and nurses’ sonography training so abortion-vulnerable mothers can see their babies . . . and be moved to choose life.
Every $60 you send will help save the life of one preborn baby through our Option Ultrasound program.
You’ll also help with a brand new initiative to fight for preborn babies—our ALIVE 2020, a celebration of life on ONE day in FIVE different cities with live ultrasounds of third-trimester babies! On May 9th, friends like you can help Focus on the Family host one of the largest pro-life events in our 43-year history.
Give now to help save a child’s life through Option Ultrasound and through efforts like ALIVE 2020!
“A war on the unborn”? Let that slide, there’s much worse here. As I’m understanding this, having ultrasound machines and skilled operators will enable “abortion-vulnerable mothers” see their babies and decide they can’t kill the baby.
I can’t get pregnant, just as Arnold Schwarzenegger can’t get pregnant either, except perhaps in a movie. But I think that if I had a baby growing in me, I would be quite aware of it without needing an ultrasound. At least past the first trimester. From WebMD:
One of the most exciting moments in your pregnancy is when you feel those first little flutters of your baby kicking. These tiny movements reassure you that your baby is developing and help you feel closer to the little life inside of you.
When Will I Feel My Baby Kicking?
You should feel your baby's first movements, called "quickening," between weeks 16 and 25 of your pregnancy. If this is your first pregnancy, you may not feel your baby move until closer to 25 weeks. By the second pregnancy, some women start to feel movements as early as 13 weeks. You're more likely to feel baby move when you're in a quiet position, either sitting or lying down.
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How Often Should I Feel My Baby Moving?
Early in your pregnancy, you may just feel a few flutters every now and then. But as your baby grows -- usually by the end of the second trimester -- the kicks should grow stronger and more frequent. Studies show that by the third trimester, the baby moves about 30 times each hour.
So definitely in the third trimester a pregnant woman should feel the baby kicking. Which makes the Focus on the Family’s “celebration of life ... with live ultrasounds of third-trimester babies” kind of insulting.
Are third trimester mothers “abortion-vulnerable”? Something tells me that for the most part no. “I thought of killing the little bastard, but then I saw a blurry image of him on the ultrasound and decided not to go through with the murderous abortion,” said no one ever.
Maybe it’s because the people at Focus on the Family know full well that first trimester babies are too small for convincing ultrasound images.
And where will all these ultrasound machines be sent to? Established and respected pre-natal care clinics? Or to “crisis pregnancy” centers where liars make a hard sell for “life”?
Pregnant women deserve unbiased medical advice about the viability of their fetuses. They won’t get that at a place where the staffers are more concerned with scoring one more against liberals and abortion.
According to Judith Lewis Mernit writing for American Prospect in 2012, “twenty weeks marks a crucial point in a pregnancy, when fetal abnormalities can be detected, often for the first time.” Abnormalities like Down syndrome.
It would be logical to expect, then, that these new restrictions on abortion would be accompanied by increased public services for women and children-especially for children with developmental disabilities. The laws should also lead to stronger support for physically, intellectually, and developmentally disabled teenagers and adults … You might expect the people passing these laws to rally behind the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which bars insurance companies from turning anyone away based on a pre-existing condition; after all, no condition is more pre-existing than one you're born with.
This is logical. It’s also naïve, and underestimates Republicans’ capacity for hypocrisy.
But nothing of the sort is happening. Instead, even as state legislators are finding new ways to interfere with a woman's or couple's decisions about baby-making, they are reducing the services upon which families depend. Arizona legislators have been particularly harsh. ...
"There have been a lot of impassioned speeches from my Republican colleagues about the significance of a child's life regardless of their disability, and about the value of human life," says Arizona House Minority Leader Chad Campbell, a Phoenix Democrat. "But when they do a budget, it doesn't include the concern for human life they talk about all the time." ...
…
"We're the only state in the country that doesn't fully fund its Children's Health Insurance Program," [Campbell] says. "The hypocrisy in the statements of my pro-life colleagues is amazing."
It’s a very interesting article, with lots of pertinent statistics and individual cases. I want to quote one more thing:
The contradiction between "protecting the unborn" while making widespread cuts to services for children and the disabled reveals a philosophy long on ideology and short on compassion. "If we really want to be a pro-child nation," Talcott Camp says, "we need policies that honor and respect and support whatever decision a woman makes about her pregnancy, whether it's to carry the pregnancy to term or end it. This skewed ideological agenda is costing us all dearly."
If one honestly wants to rescue babies from abortion, one should support initiatives like Medicare for All. That will save a lot more lives than sending ultrasound machines to wacko “crisis pregnancy” centers.